Stanford Climbing Wall

Sander Breur

Smallish, but great routes. Not too busy and routes change often enough.

Katherine Ding

Decent for a college climbing gym, but pretty small.

Brad Clymer

Not bad for a student climbing area - and has a great staff - but has some issues. The route grading seems off: everything is compressed toward v4, i.e. some of the v2s were hilariously hard, and the v6s were oddly easy. This usually happens when there are no professional setters involved: often the strongest few climbers just throw up some random holds and guess at the rating. More than a few 5.8s here had incredibly awkward foot swaps or small hand matches, relative to the grade. The harder routes weren’t so bad, probably because the setters cared more. The space is small, and even if folks wanted to have good manners, it would be difficult; it’s just about impossible to stay out of the way and maintain a place in line. A huge issue is the interleaving of the routes and boulder problems; often the hardest moves of problems put your body in a perfect position to become ensnared on a rope during a fall, which is pretty unsafe. Best to boulder here with a friend to hold the ropes away, or skip it and just rope climb. The training facilities are actually pretty impressive: small peg board, decent campus rungs. For a student gym, it’s probably fine, but if you’d like to climb more, head down the road to a dedicated climbing gym.

Peter Montgomery

Nice variety of routes!